The readability index

If you design long form texts for the web your readers shouldn’t sigh or wince when they open one of your articles.

One of the finest inventions of the digital age is Readability. Press the red sofa icon and voila! no more ads, dark backgrounds or tiny text. It can even send articles to your Kindle.

Of course, we shouldn’t need Readability, but it does provide a clear way of evaluating how well you’ve designed a web page. If your reader clicks the icon then you’ve failed. There’s even a formula we could use, something like number of page views divided by number of times the page is sent to Readability. Forget likes, retweets and Dribble: A readability index.